As you know, IPCPR was held in New Orleans earlier this month. We really enjoyed scouting out new products that ranged from pipe tobacco to accessories to cigars. I headed to Mexico City, Mexico four days after we returned home thinking that shipments would start arriving when I got back to work. Boy, was I wrong! I honestly believe the UPS driver was hiding around the corner waiting for me to leave. I did a little work via internet while I was away and got a sneak-peek as to what was coming in. This prompted me to get back to work a day early to start corralling all the new items.

If tobacco and accessories could be compared to animals, then someone opened all the cages in the zoo. There are new breeds of cigars blocking the walkway in the humidor. Tobacco species of all kinds are taking over the receiving area and classes of bulk and accessory varieties are in total control of my desk! It is now my job to classify and divide these untamed specimens into updates so you, our faithful follower, can enjoy the new additions without getting lost in the wild!

So get the safari hats and binoculars out and get ready for the future updates. We will be unveiling new creatures each week like the annual seasonal blend from a well-known tobacconist that will be in today's update.

George Rico of Gran Habano sat down with Brian for a few minutes at the show to talk about the new Gran Habano Azteca line.

We snagged Rocky for a quick interview on the IPCPR show floor in New Orleans last week. He was super-busy, but kind enough to take a couple of minutes with us to talk about his new cigars, especially the Fifteenth Anniversary cigar. He also touches on the new Cargo line.

Stepping back to a couple of weeks ago for a moment, when Kevin Godbee and I were in Denmark in late July, we established, finally and definitively, that Dunhill tobaccos would be coming back to the United States in September or October, first through conversations with Orlik and then, finally, getting confirmation from British- American Tobacco. The first day of the show, Tuesday, while we were at the Ashton booths, talking about Petersons with Tom Palmer (Managing Director of Peterson), Michael Walters (Sales Manager for Ashton), and Evan Carpenter (our regional sales representative), it became clear that we better get an order together for CAO for the Dunhill tobaccos. Susan and Brian dashed over there, while Alyson and I continued to work on Petersons. They placed an order for many thousands of tins of Dunhill tobacco for late September delivery (which might be a slightly optimistic ETA, so we're actually figuring on early October). The really important thing was to secure the Dunhill in appropriate quantities. Even in these truly massive amounts, we are a little concerned with stock problems in the autumn given all of the folks out there waiting for it to become available again. We'd return to both Ashton and CAO later in the show to conduct cigar and accessory business, but getting the pipes taken care of with Peterson and the tobacco taken care of with CAO took priority over all else late Tuesday morning.

Having wrapped up all of the pipe buying, we moved into a more normal pace for the rest of the show. After a quick lunch, we had a meeting with General Cigar to talk about their new products, including some really interesting new cigars from La Gloria Cubana, including the new Serie-N cigars, plus the new Artesanos Obilisks. While Susan and Brian actually conducted the business-y bits, Alyson and I set about interviewing Yuri Guillen, factory manager for La Gloria Cubana about all the new stuff. General also had a cigar roller based in Miami up for the show, so that was fun to watch too (and we have video of all of this we'll work on getting up over the next few weeks).

Speaking of which, a major topic of conversation at the show was the TTB's definitions of pipe tobacco and according regulations. It's terribly esoteric and convoluted, but the short and long of it is that, after extended conversations with Mike McNiel from McClelland and Paul Creasy and others from Altadis, we're actually feeling better about the situation than we have in recent months. The TTB and ATF seem to be handling this fairly transparently and fairly, at least by governmental regulatory body standards. Much remains to be seen, which may take years to be established, but it seems like everything will generally remain as is in the mid-term.

And that evening, we had an amazing culinary and historical experience courtesy of the wonderful folks at Villiger-Stokkebye. And for that story, you'll have to tune in again for the next part of the IPCPR trip overview...

Much of my past week has been spent prepping for our trip to New Orleans for the annual IPCPR trade show. Hotel rooms and transportation are all set; we have great dinners lined up and I'm excited to make my requisite pilgrimage to Café du Monde on Jackson Square for beignets and coffee at least once (or about eight times if time permits). Susan, Alyson, Sykes and I met this past Wednesday to plan day one of the show, our pipe day. Knute Rockne would not be impressed, but Sykes was actually drawing football plays by the end of the meeting (which, among other things, is why we try to avoid having meetings). Ron, our store manager, handed me a list multiple pages long that reads like an eight-year-old's list for Santa Claus and we have appointments lined up with makers of pipes, pipe tobacco and, especially at this show, cigars.

I've already received many ideas from friends for cigars and other products to be on the lookout for, plus one unsolicited, but much appreciated, jazz club recommendation. Now is your chance to help: tell us what you'd like to see in the comments section of this post! I'll see what I can do at the show and I'll follow up with another post when I return.

Until then, laissez les bon temps rouler!

I'm a pipe smoker most of the year, but do enjoy the occasional cigar. Smoking cigars became a pastime my freshman year of college, and the humidor at the local B&M seemed like a candy store full of sweet-smelling luxury. Fast forward to 2005, when I began working for smokingpipes, and my palate had developed. The greatest time for me to learn about cigars was when I began to work in our store, Low Country Pipe and Cigar. It's one thing to browse around in a humidor the size of my apartment, at the time, and another thing entirely to be able to guide customers toward what they were really looking for. Luckily, I was not only able to sample cigars that we had to remove from inventory due to careless fingernail happy patrons, but the employee discount helped.

Initially, I reached for what I knew I liked. A Padron 1926 maduro was a favorite smoke for my birthdays, so I decided to figure out what made the stick so great. Blends in a cigar (filler, wrapper, and binder) make the smoke what it is. Further experimentation told me there really is a difference between a $2 cigar, and one that was closer to $10 or $20. It became important for me to learn about what I enjoyed with each particular cigar, so listening to the cigar-reps was actually educational. Long-filler, Nicaraguan, Dominican, Cuban-seed, Connecticut, Maduro, clipping, punching, etc. became terms I would absorb and repeat to our customers. Much to my amazement, I began to know what I was talking about. When a representative from Tatuaje came into the store, I listened to his explanations of brown label, red label, and (later) white label. There actually is a difference in these smokes, and the most prominent is the flavor obtained from the Cuban-seed plants grown in Nicaragua, and I prefer the brown label.

I would not explain these smokes as "sweet", because they are not, but am not hesitant to liken the flavors to toasted nuts. The first smoke came from a Tatuaje Petite. Smaller cigars tend to have a different flavor than their big brothers, and that comes from the proportion of filler, binder, wrapper, and the amount of each lending their smoke the the appropriate puff. After a brief clip to open the draw, yet retain a portion of the cap to hold everything together, I did a brief toast with a wooden match, and the applied a delicate draw. Flavors of cedar, toast, and nuts swirled around my tongue. What a fantastic smoke! To me, this is as close to the forbidden-smokes we can't get. The Noella (center in the picture) was one of the most popular cigars sold in our store for years, and still holds strong. Stocking up on these is a great idea. One of the biggest, and baddest, smokes is the foil-wrapped RC-233. Apparently, Cuban cigars used to be entirely wrapped in such foils, but customers today want to see what they are buying (and I agree). For my birthday this year, my wife and I headed to the state park on the beach to grill out, get some sun, and I fired up the cigar. Part of me was worried that the size would make for an extremely strong or bitter smoke toward the end. Not true. The double-tapered construction allows for brief changes in flavor toward the beginning, and I smoked this all they way down to a nub. I enjoy my pipes at work, and in my workshop, but when I head to the beach for a good part of the day, a great cigar fits the bill.

We have some cigar experts here. Brian's been kicking around the cigar business for years, Ron knows his stuff. As do Kelly and Adam. I've deferred to the cigar knowledge of others for some time. The cigar business changes too quickly for me to keep up. So, while I think I write and speak knowledgeably about pipes and pipe tobaccos, I always feel like I'm on shakier ground with cigars, lest someone guess that I really haven't much idea what I'm talking about when I'm talking cigars. So, upfront on the cigar thing, I don't know much of anything about cigars. In theory, I've been in the cigar business for eleven years in one capacity or another. In reality, I've spent 97.5% of that time thinking about pipes and pipe tobacco. For serious cigar insight, I suggest talking with someone else here. That warning in place, read on if you want a pipe guy's musings on cigars...

That said, I am an occasional cigar smoker. And since even occasional cigar smokers like to pontificate about what they like to smoke, I feel like I'm equally equipped to share some thoughts on this. I tend to go in fits and starts with cigars. The pipe is a near constant companion, but I might go a month without smoking a cigar and then smoke a half dozen in a week and then go another month without smoking one. Lately, I've found myself smoking milder maduros. Not necessarily really mild, but I've always liked maduros, but found many (think Camacho, for example) just a bit too much for both a) my tolerance for that kind of nicotine, and b) my rather unsophisticated cigar palate.

Two have jumped out at me lately. Carlos Torano's Virtuoso line, specifically the Baton. I also like the Encore when I haven't the time for the super-long lancero shape (and, seriously, the Baton is the first lancero that I've ever liked; I'm normally a robusto/toro kind of guy). Anyway, this maduro has a lot going for it: rich and earthy, but not overwhelming, almost creamy at times, and subtly spicy here and there. I tried my first Baton at the IPCPR show almost two years ago and have returned to it over and over since then. They're also fairly reasonable price-wise, making them a solid choice for me, a guy who flinches slightly at the prospect of a ten dollar cigar.

Pricier, but not eliciting too much of a flinch, is Ashton's Aged Maduro No. 20. Soft, creamy, gentle, complex: I simply love this cigar. I also have this distinct impression that I might be the only guy in the country who smokes Ashton Aged Maduros. I think some of my more sophisticated cigar smoking brethren might turn their noses up at a mild, gentle maduro, but I think this is one fine cigar-- one that it too often overlooked next to its more famous brethren like the VSG (which, yes, I also like, but that's sort of like saying that I like chocolate ice cream: does anyone not like Ashton VSGs?).

I'm still very much exploring my way through the humidor, taking recommendations from those guys here who know cigars better than I do. It's a fun process. With pipe tobacco, I pretty much know what I'm getting into; yes, I get excited about new blends, especially ones that I think I'll like, but that narrows the exploratory field for me. With cigars, I feel like an early colonial lost in the wilds of Virginia, treading a path entirely unfamiliar. With pipe tobacco, it's sort of like hanging out in a neighborhood I've known my whole life. It's a totally different experience for me, and not just because the flavors diverge so wildly.